Skiing The World's Tallest Sand Dune

Ian Greenwood
·2 min read

Spring skiing often entails riding surfaces other than snow, like grass or water.

What about getting some sand in the mix, though? This question guided pro skier Victor Broquedis and mountain biker Kilian Bron to Cerro Blanco, Peru, the world's tallest sand dune. Check out their mind-blowing antics below.

Mind-blowing! I'm always impressed at how skiable sand dunes appear to be. You'd think they'd be too gritty to gain momentum, but videos like this discredit that assumption.

What if this is the future of skiing? It's a known fact that the globe's warming (I'm aware North America saw record-breaking season snow this winter, not getting into the weather/climate discussion here), a development that could spell the end of skiing as we know it at some point in the future.

But maybe we don't need snow to ski. I'm imagining a resort built on an enormous sand dune like the one featured here, complete with chairlifts and a base area. The question is whether building a chairlift on a sand dune is possible. I imagine structural integrity would be a problem.

And I doubt standard alpine skis would hold you up if you put them through a season of sand skiing. That's like base grinding your skis multiple times in one season.

Thankfully, snow hasn't gone the way of the dodo yet (and hopefully won't ever), so we don't need to think too much about a hypothetical sand dune ski resort. Riding sand is and will hopefully remain a fun gimmick, not a necessary part of the skiing experience.

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